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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Is it a blog or a post?



Sometimes in the throes of temporary insanity, I call a blog "post" a "blog."

Luckily I have Twitter followers to set me straight. They have called me to task on several occasions for this linguistic gaffe. 

You see, calling a post a blog is like calling an article a  magazine. And it tends to upset people who are the arbiters of what is right and wrong on line (or is it online?).

For example, Paul Hutchinson, who posts blogs at the cleverly titled "Paul Hutchinson's Blog," says he is "getting very annoyed" at what he sees as a redefinition of the venerable (since 1999 when it was coined from "weblog") word "blog".

There's Kristen Havens, who wrote an interesting blog on semantics, at her "Writing and Editing" site. Using just 485 words, Kristen mentions different ways to use post and blog correctly and incorrectly. This particular blog of hers originally appeared on a site called MySpace, whatever that is.

But the real winner is Forrest Wickman writing in Slate's Culture blog. In a blog entitled "This is a blog post, not a 'blog,'" he excoriates people like Arianna Huffington and late Roger Ebert for using "blog" when they should have said "post."

Wickman says, "I hit my breaking point a few weeks back with—who else?—Amanda Palmer."

Who else indeed? I will save you the trouble of googling her name. She is some kind of singer and performer who gave a TED Talk, which actually is pretty interesting. She drove Wickman to the breaking point by calling a post of hers a blog! Can you imagine?

Suitably censured, she now calls her blogs posts as you can see on her website

I hope you enjoyed this blog post.

12 comments:

artiger said...

Slow week in the blogosphere, Scalpel?

Skeptical Scalpel said...

My mind wanders occasionally. I love to tweak people who tell us what to do on social media.

Here's a post (blog?) I wrote in 2011 about online etiquette. http://skepticalscalpel.blogspot.com/2011/11/online-etiquette-stop-telling-me-what.html

keeweedoc said...

Nice blog....
And post.

Art Fougner MD said...

Blog can also be used as a verb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

AJ said...

Wow. And I thought I had problems. Or should I call them troubles. Or maybe worries. Or anxieties?

Skeptical Scalpel said...

Yes, blog is a verb, and so is post. Thanks Arthur.

AJ, this is what we call a "first-world problem."

Anonymous said...

Perhaps you meant "calling a post a blog is like calling an article a magazine." :-)

Skeptical Scalpel said...

Anon, you are so right. I will correct it right now. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

that's not as bad as calling an operation a "surgery"
Even the Bulletin of the ACS which should know better now does this all the time.

Obat penyumbatan pembuluh darah said...

Thank you very much for the information that has been conveyed

Maurice Bernstein, M.D. said...

My goodness! You forgot to mention "thread". A thread is the ongoing topic referring to either one post or a series of posts covering the same topic.
The thread of this post is the issue of the difference between the blog and the post. The next post titled "Is it a blog or a post: Volume 2" will continue the thread. ..Maurice.

Skeptical Scalpel said...

Yes, an operation should not be called a surgery.

Maurice, thanks for mentioning thread. I think that some people also call it a thread in chat forums or even in the comments section of a post.

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